Chrissie HyndeThe Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde has shared her thoughts on the ever-evolving, controversial subject of phones at concerts, describing punters who refuse to put their phones away as “entitled” and the behaviour as a “weird compulsion.”
In a new social media post, Hynde spoke about a recent dinner with country music icon Emmylou Harris, during which the conversation turned to phones at concerts.
“This is a subject that comes up every time I meet any artist. It’s become like an unpleasant fug hanging over the head of all artists,” she wrote.
She continued, “You can plaster a venue with signs requesting ‘NO CAMERAS’, but people don’t respect it. It’s as if people feel entitled, even though the artist clearly has asked them not to do it.”
While Hynde has clear disdain for the subject, she admitted that she’s not talking about pop artists “who encourage this practice because they want to be on social media.”
The Message of Love singer added that at Bob Dylan shows, it’s required that punters’ phones are sealed in a bag. But Hynde says that still isn’t enough.
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“You would think an artist of his stature could make a simple request and the audience would respect it,” she wrote. “No chance. People will still sneak in a camera or a phone. It’s like a weird compulsion that people can’t control.”
Sharing a more, ahem, illustrative comparison, Hynde continued, “It reminds me of monkeys wanking in full view of the people standing around their enclosure. And frankly, in that case, people deserve to be wanked at because monkeys should not be in an enclosure in the first place. However, an artist on a stage?”
Hynde added that the general public doesn’t seem to understand “why artists don’t like it” and compared people filming or taking photos at concerts to having “a mosquito buzzing around your head when you’re trying to sleep.”
Following her conversation with Harris, Hynde watched her friend perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London, expressing dismay after an audience member “started filming it on his phone,” resulting in the concert being “obscured by the bright light of his phone.”
Hynde also outlined two other phone-heavy incidents she recently witnessed: a punter filming actress Sarah Snook’s one-woman show, and a “nightmare” experience at a Van Gogh retrospective, in which she saw “Morons holding their phones up in front of the masterpieces so that no one could see them.”
Hynde ended her post, “My conclusion is: If Jesus Christ were to walk into a room, the first thing everyone would do would be to pull out their phone. Can someone please explain?”
Phones at concerts have become a divisive topic. For Billie Eilish, young people’s filming and photographing at shows is “an important part of the culture”. However, Sabrina Carpenter previously said she supports banning phones at concerts but admitted that implementing the idea at her shows would “piss off” her fans.
Bob Dylan, Jack White, Tool, Placebo, Silk Sonic, and Australia’s own Ian Moss have all argued for—and introduced—no phone policies at their concerts.
